Word: macbeths
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...mind-boggling to observe Macbeth making the great speech of Scene V.v funny. Examining his fingernails, eyebrows raised in annoyance, Colapinto draws out the vowels as he declaims, with the injured air of one making a justified complaint, "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time..." Whatever the intent behind this kind of performance may be, its effect is to make Macbeth appear to us not as a "tragic figure" slowly cracking under his weight of guilt, grief and paranoia, but rather as somebody enjoying a private...
...immediate reaction to seeing such a performance would normally be to assume that the lead actor is simply incompetent, and doesn't "understand" that Macbeth is supposed to make you unhappy instead of amusing you. The problem is that this interpretation doesn't jive with the other facts of the production. Macbeth's director, Monidca Henderson '99, and two of its producers--Nick Saunders '99 and Sam Speedie '99--are all theater veterans with several successful Shakespearean productions behind them. One can hardly imagine that they would have produced a Mainstage play--especially one whose other elements are so rich...
...this whiny near-hysteria of Macbeth's conscious effort on somebody's part, then? Have we been handed somebody's idea of a deliberate re-reading of the character--a postmodern comedy, perhaps, along the lines of a Tom Stoppard play? If this is the idea, it doesn't seem to be working. The rest of the production interprets the text at face value; as a result, the bizarre behavior of Colapinto's Macbeth gradually renders its audience unsure whether any given line or scene is meant to be interpreted as straight drama or as comedy. The audience starts...
Consider, for example, Scene IV.ii, in which we meet Macduff's wife and son for the first time, watch them engage in a tender family scene--and then are forced to watch in horror as they are murdered by Macbeth's soldiers. In this production, the pantomime of a soldier stabbing the child (played by Aaron Goldberg '01), his cry of "He has killed me, mother!" and his immediate collapse into lifelessness was greeted by the audience with a burst of laughter...
...difficult to believe that this is the reaction that the play's producers wanted to provoke. The problem is that whatever the reason behind Colapinto's self-centered, petulant rendition of Macbeth--be it poor judgement, a deliberate attempt at experimentation, or sheer incompetence--it undermines the drama and terror essential to the play. By subverting Macbeth's atmosphere of tragedy, Colapinto's performance ultimately prevents the production from generating the fear and explosive emotion which the play is intended to evovoke. To take the Aristotelian approach, it denies us the catharsis of tragedy. To use layman's terms...